CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE OLD ACHAIAN HOUR.

A low and melancholy melody was dreaming from the organ through the corridors, as Harrington entered the still and darkened dwelling. He was about to ascend to the library, when the parlor door opened, and Mrs. Eastman, severe and ashen, beckoned him, with a ghostly motion, to come in. He entered at once. Closing the door behind him, and folding her in his arms, he looked tenderly into her still and grief-worn face, while the low music brooded above them in aërial and solemn lamentation.

“John,” she whispered, “where have you been? John, an awful feeling has been with me since you left the house—a feeling that you are doing that which I cannot bring my heart to have done—that you have already done it.”

She stopped to pore with a ghastly gaze into his countenance. In the dead stillness, tranced into deeper stillness, as it seemed, by the low creeping music, he came into rapport with the cold, dark terror that froze her soul, and he felt his blood curdle and his hair stir.

“If you have done this,” she whispered in a tone that thrilled him, “it will kill me. I cannot survive it. Tell me that you whom I love so dearly—tell me that you have not been so cruel to me. Have you done it?”

“Mother,” he said sadly, “be at ease. I have not, and I never will. But, oh! my mother, you who dread this disgrace and dishonor, think of the disgrace and dishonor it would be if that wretched fugitive were sacrificed by us! How can you bear to think of that?”

She shuddered and clung to him, wildly agitated, but smiling ghastlily with the joy she felt at the assurance of her brother’s safety from public obloquy; and still the low, lamenting strain above them dreamed sombrely in hollow murmurs through the darkened air.

“I know it; it is terrible,” she whispered. “But it must be. Yes, it must be. Hate me—despise me—never look at me again; but it must be so, and I am glad—very glad. Glad in my grief; full of grief, but glad. I am weak, I am degraded, but it is for his sake, for my brother’s sake. Oh, I bless you, I bless you that you have spared him, and me through him; I bless you. Hate me, despise me, if you must. But he is safe; the little child I played with once is safe; my brother whose sins are many and grievous, he is safe, and I am glad—I am glad!”

“Peace, peace, my mother! Let it go,” he cried. “Do not speak so to me. Do not load yourself with reproach. Oh, I feel with you, and I am not removed from you. There there—let it all be forgotten. Time will efface these sad hours, and we will be happy again.”

She gently withdrew from his embrace, weeping, and turned away; and gazing at her for a moment, full of mournful pity, he left the room, and went slowly up-stairs, with the sad music deepening around him.

It stopped as he entered the room, and Muriel rose from the organ, and came swiftly toward him, clad all in white, and noble in her beauty. He clasped her in his arms as if he had not seen her for a year.

“Joy!” she cried, looking at him with brilliant eyes, and a faint color mantling her face, “you come back to me with a changed look! You have succeeded.”

“Not yet,” he replied, proudly smiling, “but we are going to succeed. Come, let us sit together, and let me tell you what has occurred, and my plan.”

They sat down, with their arms around each other, and he told her all, and what he was going to do. She listened to the end in dreamful silence, smiling faintly, and occasionally bending her graceful head in assent to his designs.

“Now, what do you think?” he asked in conclusion. “How does the enterprise strike you?”

“I like it,” she replied, half gaily. “It is bold, simple, and I think you cannot fail of success. Go manfully then to the little battle for the good cause, and come back with your shield, or upon it. My soul goes with you.”

He folded her to his heart, proudly smiling.

“Dear friend, brave wife,” he said, fondly. “Thank heaven that we are wedded for life’s duties and life’s ends! Oh, blessed love that has not shut us in a private luxury, careless of liberty and justice and the tears of man! Yes—I will go on this enterprise of mercy, and I feel I shall succeed.”

They sat in fervent communion till the twilight fell. Emily came in as it began to darken, and they had just finished telling her what was to be done, and were charging her to say nothing of it to Mrs. Eastman, when Wentworth arrived in great spirits.

“All right,” he cried, upon entering. “The deed is done, and I feel like Benvenuto Cellini when he drew his rapier, and fought the whole gang of the Pope’s soldiers, single-handed, pinking a couple of dozen of the rascals. Ha! that was an artist for you! Oh, Benvenuto was a regular brick, he was.”

“Now, Richard! Slang again,” chided Emily.

“Slang? I deny it,” returned Wentworth, impudently. “Now what did I say?”

“You said Cellini was a brick,” said Emily, laughing.

“So he was,” retorted Wentworth, gaily. “A regular brick. Call brick slang? Why, it’s one of the finest epithets in the English language! What other term could you use that is half as expressive? And what was language made for but to express our ideas with adequacy, propriety, and elegance? Oh, by Jupiter! but I’ll stick to brick like mortar!”

“So you have Johnny,” observed Harrington, laughing.

“Yes. He’s to start from the stable at about half-past twelve and drive over to Q street to bring home a small fishing-party,” replied Wentworth, with a satirical air. “A party that goes down the harbor to catch black-fish.”

“I hope the party won’t catch a tartar,” said Emily, jestingly.

“Nor a cold,” added Muriel. “But there’s the tea-bell.”

They arose and went down to the tea-room, talking and laughing gaily.

After tea they returned for a short time to the library. Presently, Mrs. Eastman, feeling unwell, left them, and retired for the night, attended by Muriel, who, filled with compassion for her poor mother, went with her to her chamber and stayed till she was asleep.

She was gone about half an hour, and returning to the lighted library at the expiration of that time, found the three chatting together.

“Now, I am going to leave you two,” said Harrington, rising, and addressing Wentworth and Emily. “Muriel, I feel weary with the excitements of this day, and as I shall want all my freshness and vigor for this adventure, I am going up-stairs to sleep an hour or two. Richard, I’ll see you at the boat.”

“Good,” responded Wentworth. “Au revoir.”

Harrington bent his head smilingly to them both, and putting his arm around Muriel’s waist, drew her with him from the room.

“Sleep will be twice sleep with you near me,” he tenderly murmured, bending his face down to hers, as they went up the stairs together.

“Ah,” she said, with pensive playfulness, “I was afraid you were going to leave me in exile while you slept, and I do not wish to be away from you now.”

He did not answer, but clasped her a little closer to him, and they ascended in silence to their chamber.

She silently lighted a sconce upon the wall, which shed through its ground-glass globe a mellow moony light upon the pure and virginal room, with its furniture of white and gold, and its cloudlike couch, overhung with a drooping fall of filmy gauze. Then going to a closet, she took from thence a slender crystal flask covered with golden arabesques, and brought it to him.

“See,” she said, “My Greek friend, Kestor, made me a present of this more than a year ago. It is Greek wine. Yes—the vine that gave us this grew from the soil of the antique heroes. I have kept it for some great occasion, and to-night before you go, you and I will drink it.”

Smiling, he took the flask from her hand and held it to the light, looking at the clear rosy-golden glow of the fine liquid.

“It is beautiful,” he said. “Too beautiful to drink. One might fancy this such wine as Leonidas and the Three Hundred drank at the last banquet before they sallied from the immortal pass and fell upon the hosts of Xerxes. It looks fit for the veins of heroes.”

“And heroes’ wives,” she playfully added, with a charming smile. “Therefore, you and I will drink it, pledging the enterprise. But we must have some glasses.”

She rang, and presently one of the maids came up, went, and returned again with half a dozen small goblets on a tray.

“Well,” said Muriel, laughing as she looked at the tray, “with six glasses we can drink pledges. Good. Now let us sleep.”

Turning the light low, she unbound her tresses, and lying down with him, kissed his eyelids with soft and dewy kisses.

“Sleep sweetly, my beloved,” she murmured. “It is the fourth night. A very little night, but the fifth night will be sweet and long, and full of rest.”

He did not reply, but gently kissed her, and with their souls stilled with ineffable tenderness they sank away together in a slumber, innocent and sweet as that of childhood.

The room was dim around that tranquil rest, and the faint light softly showed the forms of the reposing lovers. Locked in each other’s arms, with the snowy films drooping from the golden ring in the ceiling in long and flowing festoons around them, they lay like some fair picture of immortal love and peace shadowed within the clear depths of a magic mirror in a light of darkling dawn.

An hour melted slowly by, and during that hour, folded to her bosom, and breathing the balm of her parted lips, the rest of Harrington was sweet and deep. Then a strange dream outgrew upon his brain from the oblivion of his slumber.

He was running cautiously along a vaulted archway of the rude Saxon architecture, toward a flight of five or six stone steps, which led up into the open air. It was in Saxon England, in some time of trouble, and he was a young Saxon. He saw himself clothed in a short, brown tunic, belted at the waist, and reaching nearly to the knees, which were bare, and with leather buskins on his feet. As it often happens in dreams, he both was that figure, and saw it. It was himself, but utterly unlike himself both in aspect and character. The head was uncovered, save by short, dark, curling hair; the face was youthful, unbearded, mild and timid in expression, with the cheeks rather wan; and the figure was that of a slight and strengthless stripling. A sense of general carnage was in the air of the dream, and it seemed as if in that form, he was seeking to escape from enemies. Too gentle and weak in nature to feel violent fear, he had only a timorous and innocent apprehension of his danger; and in this mood, running on to the steps, and ascending, suddenly the opening of the archway filled with armed warriors, and as he shrank on the point of turning to flee, their long axes fell upon him, and he was slain.

He awoke instantly, not with a start, but by simply unclosing his eyes. The dream was vivid, but not frightful, and waking without alarm, his first and only thought was that it was a memory of an old avatar in which he had lived on earth in a different organization than he had now, and had been killed young. For a moment this feeling came clearly to him, and then sensible of where he was, and of the sweet face breathing balm so near his own, his eyelids closed with an irresistible drowsiness, and he slept on.

His sleep was undisturbed for about half an hour when another strange dream slid upon his mind. He was sitting up awake in a bed alone by himself, and though the bed was in a room, it was yet, by some singular ubiquity, which still was not incongruous or wonderful, on the sidewalk of some unfamiliar street. Sitting upright in it in his night-clothes in a broad, grey daylight, and looking over his shoulder, he saw far, far away an illimitable waste of snow, out of which thousands upon thousands of piteous and imploring negro faces looked toward him. He had the feeling that these were the faces of the thirty thousand fugitives who at that period had fled to Canada. While he gazed at them, he beheld coming down the street on the pavement, a long procession of the Boston merchants, all familiar to him, respectable and cosy citizens whom he often saw about town, or on ’Change. They all wore their usual garb and aspect, but as they passed by his bed they all changed, yet without seeming to change, into medieval Jews, with long avaricious faces and drooping beards and stooping shoulders, and eyes bent obliquely upon the ground before them. Every hand clutched a money-bag, and every form wore the conical hat and the long Jewish gaberdine of Shylock. So they passed him, and when they had passed they were Boston merchants again, while the rest coming on changed, yet did not seem to change, into money-greedy Jews as they went by, and resumed their previous forms, though without seeming to resume them, when they had reached a certain vague limit. All this did not in the least surprise him, or seem extraordinary, or unusual, but wearying at last of the interminable and monotonous procession, he sighed and awoke.

Her dreaming face was still near him, and the cool balm of her breath touched his sense with sweet and sad ecstasy. There was a moment of unutterable weary sorrow, in which the bitter symbolism of his vision lingered with him, and then, with a feeling of melancholy comfort, his heavy eyelids drooped, and he slept again.

He had a consciousness that he had slept long, and with this in his mind, his sleeping soul awoke in a third dream. He had left his body and was in the air of the chamber. Spiritually light and poised, with the delicious sense of being able to float upward at will, he was looking down upon the couch, with the quiet room around him. He saw his body lying folded in her arms, the face sleeping close to her own. He saw how that face looked to others, and felt a dim wonder at its strangeness to his own eyes. His gaze dwelt with calm and holy tenderness, undisturbed by any regret, upon the beautiful and noble face of his beloved, sleeping in its shadowy tresses, its curved lips slightly parted, and all its clear and graceful lines composed in slumber. A thrill of silent blessing and farewell stole softly through his being, and with the feeling that he must go, he slowly floated backward through the wall, which made no more resistance than air. A trance fell upon him as he passed through, and seemed to last, though he had no sense of time, till he found himself alone in a rich and holy garden. The strange flowers were thick and deep, and wonderful in mystic beauty, and though of many rare and lovely colors, the still and tender living glory that brooded on all, gave them something of the rich pallor of flowers seen in some imaginary pearl and purple moonlight stiller and fairer than melts from any moon of ours. Or rather, they seemed pale with their own ecstasy of heavenly odor, for they filled the soft, self-luminous air with a fragrance which dissolved through all his being in ethereal and tranquil rapture. Filled with celestial bliss, he wandered on through the purpureal glory of the garden, under the holy shadow of strange trees, and amidst the myriad blowing clusters of the flowers, while the songs of birds sounded in liquid melody around him, and yet did not break the divine silence of the solemn Paradise. And wandering on, he turned a curve of the path, and came upon the gracious presence of the man he loved. He knew the majestic front, the vast brow, the sweet and piercing eye of Verulam, and like a younger brother yearning with affection, he drew nigh and laid his head upon his breast. The arms gently enfolded him; the regal face bent over his with a tender and benignant smile; and thrilling with the slow sweetness of an unutterable ecstasy, he seemed to sink into the swoon of the soul, and the vision was gone.

Her arms had fallen away from him in her slumber, and noiselessly rising as he awoke, he sat on the edge of the couch, and leaned his damp brow on his hand, his brain light and clear, his frame drenched in the renewing dew of sleep, and throbbing with the remembered bliss of his dream, and one still solemn thought distinct in his mind. He was to die! The meaning of that dream was death! A slow thrill ran through his veins as he thought of it. Yes, that was its meaning. He was to die!

He sat still for some minutes, with that thought in his mind. Gradually the sweetness of the dream failed from him, merged in a ghostly sense of the quietude around him. He looked up with a feeling of awe. The dim lamplight faintly lit the pure and shadowy chamber. All was vague, motionless, indefinite. Nothing seemed distinct or living, but that strange and awful conviction, too strong for any doubt, that he was to die.

Turning slowly, he gazed upon the face of Muriel. The last lingering relic of the sweetness of his dream failed from him as he looked upon her. His young wife. How could he bear to leave her! Four days of heavenly joy with her—heavenly even in the sorrow that had lain upon the last; four little days—the divine dawn of a long life of happiness—only four, and this was to be the end! The golden gates of a beautiful existence, affluent of use and influence and fame, just opened to him with her, and now to close forever. To lay down all the deliciousness, the joys, the hopes, the ambitions of life, for the happiness of two poor negro brothers. For their poor trampled rights to abandon life—oh, above all, to resign her! To die, and leave her on earth alone, her bursting day-spring of happy and noble love quenched in the black and blotting cloud of death. To die—to die and leave her.

Icy cold, yet with a burning brain, and slow thrills creeping through the horror of his veins, he turned away, and sat still. Hark! In the silence came the distant sound from a steeple striking the hour. He counted the slow strokes. Eleven. He looked at his watch. It was eleven o’clock. In one hour more he was to go.

He looked around the quiet room. Life never seemed to him so sweet as then. In contrast to the stillness and seclusion, the peaceful comfort and warm luxury of the restful chamber, came the vision of the bare and open night upon the bleak waste of waters, and he in the lonely boat with those rude men, thinking of the gentle being he had left behind him. A sense as of one who shivers out under the winter stars, and turns to the warm firelight and the cheerful faces of friends in the cosy glow of home, came to him, and with it came temptation like a voice. Turn from this purpose—turn to love and life! You have been staunch and true in human kindness to its uttermost demand, but your life belongs to her, and not to another. Well to save this man from his doom, but not to fling away your life for a single service, when ampler service needs you. Think of her suffering, think of her mother’s grief for your loss, think, too, of the friends you are leading into peril. Perhaps your warning includes them—think of those who will mourn them, and for their sakes turn from this hopeless purpose. Turn, for this is warning and not fate—or go, still in safety, and plead with those men for the fugitive’s release—threaten them, menace them with civil penalties, and perchance they will yield him. But if they do not, all is done that you are called to do, and life is more than you are called to give; so turn away from them, and tell your friends you cannot risk their safety, and come back here to long years of happiness with her.

Sitting in icy silence, the temptings rose within his brain, clear as if a still and gentle voice had breathed them, and mingled with a siren sense of honeyed music that seemed to circle round and round him like an airy coil. Suddenly he sprang up with a spasm of heroic grief and agony, and stood quivering with his eyes covered by his hands. Her eyelids unclosed, and lying still, she looked at him. The next instant, she leaped from the couch and clasped him in her arms.

There was a long pause of awful silence, in which he stood with head uplifted and his eyes covered with his hands, while she clung to him, her face still between its thick length of waven tresses, and gazed with dilated eyes into his half-hid features.

“My beloved! My own beloved, what is this? Was it a dream? Be calm—be strong. I am with you. I hold you in my arms. No evil thing can come to you when I am near. Love clasps you, my dear and gentle lover, and nothing can harm you.”

At the full, tender silver of her voice, the shadows and the terrors rushed from his soul. His hands fell from his still and pallid features, and putting his arms around her, he gazed into her face.

“Hush!” he murmured. “A moment! I will tell you in a moment.”

They stood in silence gazing at each other.

Presently his arms fell from her, and swiftly gliding away she turned up the light, which at once filled the room with mellow radiance. Hurriedly, he bound on his shoes, put his pistol in his breast, and sat on the couch beside her.

“Muriel,” said he, “you were right; I have had dreams. Listen.”

In a low, clear voice, he told her all. The narration occupied several minutes, and during that time she listened with a still face and lips parted. He ceased at length, and there was a long pause.

“What does this mean?” she murmured. “Do you take these dreams as augury?”

“Muriel,” said he with solemn and passionate tenderness, “do you remember what you said when we lay down to slumber? It comes again to me now. You said: ‘It is the fourth night; a very little night; but the fifth night will be sweet and long, and full of rest.’ Oh, my beloved, sweet and long, and full of rest may it be to you! Sweet and long, and full of rest, it will be to me. To-night I go from you. Can you bear that I should go when I am not to return? For the dream meant death, and I am going away to die.”

One spasm of overmastering pain convulsed her features, and vanished. The next instant her face was calm, between its fall of shadowy tresses; her lips were lightly closed; her eyes were fixed on his. But a torrent rush of memories overswept her—memories of omens and presentiments that had mysteriously foreshadowed this; and a mighty feeling rose within her, and told her that this was the voice of the prescient soul. Not for an instant did she think he was deceived, and the calmness that sank upon her spirit was the shadow of eternity.

“To die!” she answered, in a slow, rapt voice. “Going away from me to die.”

Her lips closed, and pressing one hand to her bosom, she lifted her clear, still eyes to heaven, and her countenance became pale and radiant as though it gazed upon the face of God.

There was a long interval of terrible silence.

“It is true,” she said at length, in low, abstracted tones, “he is to leave me. Our happiness foreran the ages. The world could not sustain it. The music was too divinely sweet to last, and it melts back from earth! Well, well, I know it now. The days have been filled with tokens and prophecies of this, and now I understand them. Yes—he is to die!”

Slowly her eyes grew back to him. He sat motionless, his face pallid in shadow, gazing with mournful awe upon her clear, pale features.

“Have you had presentiments of this, Muriel?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered, in a hushed voice; “there have been many. They crowd upon me now. You remember what I told you of that morning when I thought you loved Emily—how strangely your face smiled on me in my reverie from that immeasurable distance. I know now what it meant. That was a veiled prevision. Oh, my beloved, you smiled upon my soul from the depths of Eternity!”

A slow, cold thrill went through him at the solemn tenderness of her voice, and for a few moments his mind gathered blankness. Gradually the prefigurations of this hour which had filled his life for days past, came to him.

“I, too, have had spiritual warnings of this,” he murmured. “My soul has told me much lately. You remember my sad fancy when I left you on Sunday morning, that I was not to return. And on the evening of that day the event occurred which separates us.”

“Yes,” she responded, “and that was the morning when I dreamed that you were gone from earth, and were looking at me as I moved through life alone.”

Again a long silence succeeded.

“To wake from our happy sleep thus,” she said, suddenly, “is it not strange! Is it not awful! And yet I realize it all. I realize that these are our last moments together. To deny these presentiments is impossible. Yes—it is destiny. Is it not? Is there any escape for us?”

“It rests with my will, Muriel,” he answered. “I believe this dream is only a warning. If I stay here with you I am safe. It rests with me to decide whether I will go or stay.”

“Can nothing be done?” she hurriedly asked. “Is there no other way of saving this man?”

“None,” he answered. “It is too late now. The ship sails in a few hours. There is nothing but for me to go at midnight and rescue Antony, or leave him to his fate, and Roux to death or madness. One thing alone shakes me.”

“What?” she asked.

“The suffering my death will give your mother,” he answered. “It may kill her.”

“And if you die her brother’s infamy will become known,” she replied. “Public inquiry will follow, and all she wishes kept secret will be exposed with the added guilt of your death upon it.”

He did not answer, and she remained silent for a few moments, with her soul wildly stirred.

“Oh, Lemuel Atkins,” she exclaimed at length, “if you only knew the harm you have done us!”

“Pity him, Muriel,” answered Harrington. “Both he and Lafitte are the cause of this disaster. Let us pity and forgive them. They are the victims, and not we.”

“I do,” she responded, clasping her hands; “I pity and forgive them.”

“It only remains for me to decide,” he said, after a pause. “If I go to-night I feel I shall save Antony. But I think it will not be done without a struggle, and I shall be killed. On the other hand is your mother’s grief, and all the consequences of my death, and if I stay these will be spared.”

“What do you decide?” she said, quickly.

“Muriel,” said he, tenderly, “I have not spoken once of what you lose in losing me, for I know your nobleness, my wife, and I know that you can resign me to duty.”

She flung her arms around him, her eyes glowing and her features kindling into flushed and exalted loveliness.

“Do not think of me,” she said in a clear and fervent voice. “Oh, my husband, we were wedded in love for liberty, in love for all mankind, and we cannot be divided. Think alone of duty—for death can only separate us a little while, and we are wedded in love forever.”

He gazed at her with lit eyes.

“I will be worthy of you,” he answered, with proud fervor. “The Hereafter is ours. Many an earthly marriage is but a tent of the night, folded by death, and never to be raised again; but ours is a temple eternal in the heavens.”

Drawing her to his bosom, he pressed his lips to hers; then rose to his feet, and stood before her.

“My duty is clear, Muriel,” he said, in firm, determined tones. “What is all suffering that will follow my death, compared with the suffering and the wrong my death will prevent? Think of the scene we saw at Roux’s house, when Emily wished to buy his brother. Think of Antony being dragged back to torture and murder. Think of that poor brother’s agony when he learns that Antony has been recaptured. Think of all the misery and the outrage now impending. It must not be. And beyond it all is the duty I owe my country and mankind. I have sworn to balk tyrants—I have sworn to stand up for the helpless and the poor. Never yet has a man suffered wrong that I could prevent, or gone unsuccored when I could succor him. Not now shall the weak and friendless find me a dastard in their cause. So then”—

He paused, stifled with sudden emotion.

“So then”—she repeated, looking at him with a still countenance.

A rapture of color blazed upon his pallid face, and he flung up his arms.

“So then,” he cried, in a ringing voice, “I must say like him of the old Commonwealth, ‘To heaven, my love, to heaven, and leave you in the storm!’”

Her eyes flashed, and she rose to her feet with the rich blood glowing in her kindled features.

“Brave heart!” she passionately cried, “one hour of life with you is worth annihilation! Away with grief—let it never come nigh me! I swear to you, Harrington, never, when you are gone, shall one pulse of sorrow stir within me—never shall one tear stain the lustre of my soul’s pride in you! You die—die?—no!—it is not death, but life! It is the life of life to die for man!”

“Ay!” he exclaimed, with rapturous fervor, “I feel it so. It is life to live for man. It is the life of life to die for him. It is sweet to die for one’s country, and to-night I die for mine. Far in the future I see it—my own dear land, my America, the land where all shall be free and equal, the land of lovers and of friends. Oh, my land, of you I dream, for you I have lived, for you I die!”

She stood gazing at him as he poured forth these words—her face white and radiant, her eyes brilliant, her hands pressed to her bosom, which rose and fell in quick pulsations.

“And for you,” he cried, as his eyes rested upon her, “for my love of you I die. Oh, my wife, I love you greatly, or I could not leave you! I could not love you truly if I failed in love for liberty and justice. Dying for them, I prove my love for you.”

With a low, adoring cry she was in his arms, and clasping each other, they moved to the centre of the chamber, with sweet and passionate words of affection and farewell. The burning moments of that last sublime communion sped swiftly by, and the time for the earthly parting drew near.

“It is the last banquet,” she said, with a bright smile. “To-night is your Thermopylæ.”

“Ours,” he quickly answered. “Ours, for you, too, die. Your death is to be divided from me—a sterner and loftier death than mine.”

“Yes,” she answered, with solemn fervor, “it is indeed my death. My heart is proud, my soul is filled with joy, but I die, for life will never be truly life again till I meet you in the land of the asphodel. So be it. I do not quail. For you, for me, it is the old Achaian hour.”

“For you, for me,” he fervently responded. “I await you in the Hereafter. My life will be but half divine until you come. Now we must part.”

She clung to him for a moment, then withdrew from his arms.

“Come,” she said, taking up the flask, “the last pledge. Ah, wine of the land of Leonidas, little did I dream we should pour you to the pledge of the immortals! But the old Greek hour—the festal hour of death has dawned.”

With a quick, deft blow on a marble console, she smote the top from the flask, and filled the six goblets with the rosy-golden wine. Each took one. Holding up the glass, her pale face lit with a dazzling smile, her fine nostrils quivering, and the long, bright locks flowing over her white vesture, her noble figure, in its debonair abandon, wore the old Greek Bacchanal grace and glow.

“The wine from the land of the Three Hundred is fit to pledge liberty’s defence,” she gaily said. “Come, let our first pledge be—In Liberty’s Defence!”

“Good!” he answered. “In Liberty’s Defence!”

The goblets clanged, the pledge was drank, and the glasses were flung down. They took up two more.

“And now?” she said.

He looked at her with a sweet and solemn face.

“And now,” he answered, “forgiveness and compassion. For all injuries, for all baseness, for all trampling of the rich upon the poor, for all trampling of the strong upon the weak—forgiveness and compassion!”

“With my whole soul,” she solemnly and gently replied. “For the sordid and the cruel—forgiveness and compassion!”

The goblets softly clanged, the tender pledge was drank, and the glasses were flung down.

“Now,” said he, as they took up the last two, “the first pledge was in wine from the land of Leonidas. But the second was in wine from the land of Socrates. Let the third be drank in wine from the land of both—the saint and the hero; for the pledge is mighty.”

“Speak it, my beloved,” she said, in clear and thrilling tones.

“Drink,” his deep voice sounded, “drink the deep pledge in the wine from the bright ideal shore, to the Spirit whose wings span the world, whose life pulses through the universe—the Spirit for whom we live and die!”

“I know, I know!” she cried. “Spirit, we drink to thee in the wine from the holy shore! Spirit of every noble thought and deed and passion, whose breath is life to liberty and justice, and the soul of man—to thee, for whom we live and die—TRUE LOVE, we drink to thee!”

They quaffed the fiery and aërial wine, and dashing the goblets ringing and shivering on the floor, they sprang into each other’s arms. One long and close embrace—one long and passionate clinging kiss—and they withdrew.

“Hereafter!”

Their voices rang together by a common impulse in the word: and with one long dreaming gaze of impassioned tenderness upon her proud and radiant face, he rushed away to his death like a bridegroom to his bride.